Apparently angry about the Anti-Money Laundering Council’s failure to support his campaign against illegal drugs, President Duterte on Thursday threatened to “whack” officials of the regulatory body headed by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) governor, accusing them of corruption and inefficiency.
Mr. Duterte demanded the AMLC members resign for failing to provide him an “assessment report.” He did not say what that was but Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II told reporters the President obviously referred to the investigations into the bank accounts of Sen. Leila de Lima and suspected drug lords.
De Lima has been accused of receiving drug money when she was justice secretary, a charge she has denied.
“I’ll count one to three and if you don’t resign, I will treat you as a drug addict,” said the President, who is waging a brutal antidrug campaign that has left about 6,000 people dead since he took office in July.
“Better prepare there because I’ll give you a whack. But you are all, you are all corrupt,” he said in a speech after signing the 2017 national budget.
“I am going to charge all of you there, criminally,” Mr. Duterte said without naming any council official in particular.
The four-member council is headed by BSP Governor Amando Tetangco and also includes the government’s chief insurance and securities regulators, as well as the council’s executive director.
The Anti-Money Laundering Law prohibits the council from sharing any information with anyone else except under court order.
Last month, Mr. Duterte warned the central bank and the council to “avoid a confrontation between us.” At the time he said government agencies had to “do more, especially on digging records that would show laundered money.”
The President said on Thursday he had learned from the National Bureau of Investigation that the council had yet to submit an assessment report.
Second warning
Mr. Duterte said he was warning the AMLC for the second time, noting that the council took action only after he castigated it during his remarks at the NBI anniversary last month. There, he had lashed out at the AMLC for giving the Department of Justice a hard time in its investigation of the illegal drug transactions inside New Bilibid Prison.
On Thursday, he said the NBI director had told him that there were still money-laundering reports that have yet to be submitted.
“I was told by the director that up to now, there’s no report of this AMLC,” he said.
He said the officials were “contributing to the corruption of this country.”
“You have reported to the NBI and submitted it very late. Yet you do not have the assessment report. You were placed there because you have a job to do,” he said.
They should get out of the office if they cannot do their job, he added.
President Rodrigo Roa Duterte delivers his speech during the AFP 81st anniversary in Camp Aguinaldo.INQUIRER PHOTO / JOAN BONDOC
‘Stonewalling’
Tetangco is about to retire, the President said. “Better prepare there ’cause I’ll give you a whack. You are all corrupt and serving a master. You are not supposed to engage in politics. Goddamnit.”
Aguirre told reporters that Mr. Duterte, in his tirade, was referring to people implementing the Anti-Money Laundering Law, those in the office of the AMLC executive director.
“I’m sure he was referring to that because there’s stonewalling. They haven’t given the assessment, the analysis of the account,” Aguirre said in an interview.
The only documents given to the DOJ were the statement of accounts of De Lima and the other alleged drug lords, he said.
The council referred requests for comment to the central bank.
The fiery Duterte won a landslide election victory this year after pledging to kill 100,000 criminals to prevent the country from turning into a “narcostate.”
Since July police said they have killed 2,124 drug suspects while more than 3,000 others were gunned down or stabbed by unidentified assassins. —WITH A REPORT FROM AFP